March 2014 – AFRICA – Africa’s biggest Ebola outbreak in seven years has probably spread from Guinea to neighboring Liberia and also threatens Sierra Leone. Five people are suspected to have died from the disease in Lofa county in northern Liberia, Bernice Dahn, Liberia’s chief medical officer, said at a briefing yesterday. At least 86 cases and 59 deaths have been recorded across Guinea, the West African country’s health ministry said. The capital, Conakry, hasn’t been affected, government spokesman Albert Damantang Camara said, after the United Nations Childrenâs Fund said the outbreak had spread there. “The forest region where Unicef delivered the emergency assistance on Saturday is located along the border with Sierra Leone and Liberia with many people doing business and moving between the three countries,” said Laurent Duvillier, a Unicef spokesman, in an e-mail yesterday. “Risk of international spread should be taken seriously.” Unicef plans to dispatch 5 metric tons of aid, including medical supplies, to the worst-affected areas. Suspected cases of the lethal hemorrhagic disease are being investigated in Guinea’s southeast border areas, according to the World Health Organization. “The three cases which were registered in Conakry have no link with Ebola,” Camara said. “The analyses were made abroad. The outbreak of the disease may be heavier than 59 but the health ministry will release a statement on the disease soon.”

The Geneva-based WHO hasn’t previously recorded any outbreaks of Ebola in Guinea, the world’s biggest exporter of bauxite, the ore used to make aluminum. At least eight health-care workers who were in contact with infected patients have died, hindering the response and threatening normal care in a country already lacking in medical personnel, Unicef said. “This outbreak is particularly devastating because medical staff are among the first victims,” New York-based Unicef said. There is no specific treatment or vaccine for Ebola. Supplies delivered over the weekend are being distributed to health-care workers, said Timothy La Rose, a Unicef spokesman, in an e-mail yesterday. “We are focusing on prevention,” La Rose said. “We are alerting the public on how to avoid contracting Ebola. Since there is no treatment, this is the best way to stop the spread.” Medecins Sans Frontieres is setting up isolation and treatment units while workers at Rio Tinto Plc’s operations have been issued with personal protection equipment. The five latest cases were in the towns of Gueckedou and Macenta, it said. The Ebola virus is transmitted through contact with blood or bodily fluids of an infected person or wild animal, according to the WHO. It was first identified in 1976 in Congo and Sudan, when two different strains of the virus killed 431 of the 602 people infected. Mali and Ivory Coast called for vigilance to prevent the disease from spreading across their borders. The countries border Guinea along with Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal.

Mali’s government yesterday warned against unnecessary travel to the contaminated area, after the health ministry held a crisis meeting and called on citizens to be “vigilant.” Liberia’s New Democrat newspaper ran an editorial in which it said there was an immediate need for increased surveillance on all border posts with Guinea. Many of the goods sold in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, come from Guinea. Ivory Coast set up a coordinating post in Man on the border with Guinea and will increase surveillance and run awareness campaigns, the country’s health ministry said. Recent Ebola outbreaks have occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2012 and in Uganda in 2011, according to the WHO. –Business Week

March 2014 – CANADA – A man returning to Canada from Liberia is seriously ill in hospital after experiencing symptoms consistent with the Ebola virus that has killed dozens in Guinea, health officials have said. The man has been placed in solitary confinement pending the expected results on Tuesday of tests on his condition. His family is in quarantine in Saskatchewan province, the local health ministry said in a statement. “A diagnosis has not yet been confirmed. Measures have been taken to isolate the patient to ensure the illness is not transmitted,” the ministry said. Public health officials earlier sought to contain people’s concerns, saying the risk to the public was low and noting that an investigation into the case’s circumstances was under way. “All we know at this point is that we have a person who is critically ill who travelled from a country where these diseases occur,” Denise Werker, joint director of health in Saskatchewan, in western Canada, told reporters. The casualty had been in Liberia but developed the symptoms after landing in Canada and would not have been contagious when in transit, she said.

“The information that we have now is this person was not ill when he travelled,” Werker added. “People are not very contagious in the incubation period. There is also a possibility this person has another disease.” Aid workers and health officials in Guinea are battling to contain West Africa’s first outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, after neighboring Liberia reported its first suspected victims. At least 59 people are known to have died in Guinea’s southern forests but the Liberian cases, if confirmed, would mark the first spread of the highly contagious pathogen into another country. Werker said the risk of contagion in Canada was low as the disease, one of the world’s most virulent, is transmitted to humans from wild animals and between humans by direct contact with blood, feces or sweat, or by sexual contact and the unprotected handling of contaminated corpses. To date, no treatment or vaccine is available for the Ebola pathogen, which kills between 25 and 90 percent of those who fall sick, depending on the strain of the virus, according to the World Health Organization. The tropical virus — described in some health publications as a “molecular shark” — can fell its victims within days, causing severe fever and muscle pain, weakness, vomiting and diarrhoea — in some cases shutting down organs and causing unstoppable bleeding. It was first discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 1976. The central African country has suffered eight outbreaks. –Yahoo News

A deadly outbreak of the Ebola virus that has so far killed at least 78 people in Guinea has spread

to neighbouring Liberia, the World Health Organisation confirmed on Sunday.

In a statement, the WHO confirmed two samples of blood from Liberia tested positive for Ebola - a virus with a fatality rate of up to 90 per cent - and described the African outbreak as a 'rapidly changing situation'.

In nearby Sierra Leone a further two recent deaths have been attributed to Ebola. It has closed its land border with Guinea to keep the virus from spreading further.

Isolation zone: Areas like this one in Conakry, Guinea have been set up to quarantine Ebola sufferers

Outbreak: Officials have now confirmed cases in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia

Officials have called for calm in the wake of the outbreak, with the WHO advising against travel restrictions being placed on the affected countries.

According to the UN's chief public health body, 'There have been 2 deaths among the suspected cases [in Liberia]; a 35 year old woman who died on 21 March tested positive for ebolavirus while a male patient who died on 27 March tested negative.'

The worrying news was passed onto the WHO by Liberia's health minister Walter Gwenigale, who told The Associated Press that one of the patients, who died in Lofa County, was married to a Guinean man and had returned ill from a recent trip there.

The second patient is a sister of the dead woman. Mr Gwenigale said she is alive and has been isolated in a medical center outside of Monrovia.

He would not elaborate on the woman's condition or circumstances surrounding her illness 'because we don't want to cause panic'.Ebola is passed onto humans from animals - especially fruit bats - and often breaks out near rainforests in central and western Africa.

According to a WHO fact sheet: Ebola 'is a severe acute viral illness often characterised by the sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat.

Emergency response: The World Health Organisation is devoting extra resources to stop the spread of the disease

Epidemic fears: Doctors Without Borders is dispatching protection gear to affected regions as the death toll hits 70

Guinea battles to contain unprecedented Ebola epidemic

'This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding. Laboratory findings include low white blood cell and platelet counts and elevated liver enzymes.'

The intensely painful illness is highly contagious and can be passed on to humans through contact with the bodies of people killed by the virus.

There is no known cure or vaccine for the five viruses which cause Ebola.

Guinea confirmed last week that several victims of hemorrhagic fever in the country's southern region had tested positive for Ebola. Cases have also been confirmed in the capital, Conakry.

The WHO is devoting extra resources to surveillance and tracking of cases in response to the outbreak - which has been dubbed an epidemic by some news sources - and is training health care workers in the region.

Senegalese music star Youssou Ndour cancelled a weekend concert in the Guinea capital because it would bring a large crowd together.The Ebola outbreak is the first of its kind in west Africa in two decades. It has killed an estimated 1500 people since it was first discovered in Zaire in 1976.

Though officials at the World Health Organization are feverishly working to stop the spread of the Ebola virus in what is now seven African nations, their efforts may be for naught. In Guinea, a hot spot for the deadly contagion, government health officials have said that the outbreak is nearly under control. Yet, Reuters reports that the government “planned to stop publicly releasing the death toll to avoid causing unnecessary panic.” But panic may be in order.

The outbreak of Ebola Virus in seven west African countries has broken through all containment efforts and is spreading like wildfire. According to Christian Relief groups working in Guinea and Liberia, the number of confirmed infections jumped 15% in just the last 24 hours. In addition, 40 illegal alien migrant workers from the outbreak area, who came ashore in Pisa, Italy, are showing signs of Ebola infection and are being isolated in Pisa Italy because of fever and “conjunctivitis” (bloody around the eyes). According to the World Health Organization, this strain of Ebola is entirely new and although it is close to the Zaire strain, it is different, thus accounting for false-negative test results . . . . . for weeks!

Those false-negative results meant people who were actually infected with Ebola, were returned to their families and neighborhoods to recover from what they believed was the Flu or a case of food poisoning, only to spread the Ebola further.

The result has been a complete loss of containment of this Ebola outbreak.

With the likely arrival of Ebola in Pisa, Italy, the European continent is now at severe risk.

Italian officials deny the reports, but alternative media in the country suggests this is the reason for a complete lock down of a hospital in Pisa, where it is believed to have infected some 40 individuals. Other reports trickling in from various sources like social media indicate the virus may have also appeared about 50 miles from Pisa in Tuscany, Italy. Alarmingly, a story that appeared about the outbreak on national news wires was reportedly removed by the Italian government for “national security reasons,” suggesting that there is more to the reports than Italian officials are willing to express to the public at this time.

Though they have denied that the Pisa hospital was locked down due to Ebola, they seem to be bracing for the possibility of a severe epidemic in Rome and Milan.

Citation:

(Google Translation via Italy’s Vnews24) And ‘mystery about forty hypothetical cases of Ebola registered in our country. The virus is particularly common on the African continent – the cases “official” were recorded in Senegal, Mali and Ghana - may have arrived in Italy “thank you” to the massive exodus of immigrants to our shores. A first “bell” d ‘alarm was launched by Lampedusa. According to a report appeared in the network (and immediately removed for reasons of “national security”), in fact, April 16 would be recorded on an epidemic ‘island, never confirmed nor refuted by our Ministry of Health.

A new ”SOS” about the spread of the virus’ Ebola in the Bel Paese is, this time, from Tuscany. Means of dissemination of the news shock is always the network: blogs, social networks, websites dedicated highlighted the “Curious Case of St. Flushing,” reception center site in Pisa,closed to the public due to the presence, all ‘inside of it, forty non-EU nationals which are to some strange symptoms. Capuzzi Sandra, Councillor for Social Policies of the Municipality of Pisa, he would have dismissed the alarmism of his countrymen, by classifying the health status of the refugees in the structure in these terms: “They have just a little bit fever, caused by stressful travel conditions under which the children were subjected. “

Fear, meanwhile, remains. The forty possible carriers of the virus’ Ebola have been subjected to all the tests required in high-risk situations. The Italian population, however, does not feel the climate of reassurance that high institutional positions and subjected try to transmit information through various channels, official and unofficial. The tension increases, although the Ministry of Health said that, in the unlikely event of an outbreak, Rome and Milan would be ready to face the ‘epidemic.

According to Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian relief group actively working with hospitals and health officials in Guinea and Liberia, what makes Ebola so dangerous is that it can be transmitted through human contact and may take weeks before symptoms appear:

Citation:

The initial Ebola outbreak in Guinea is believed to have started when hunters came in contact with infected fruit bats. The Ebola virus is spread between humans through direct contact. Once infected, it can take up to 21 days for symptoms to appear, which include high fever, headaches, and fatigue. At that point, the infected person is contagious.

With details lacking and health officials opting to keep reports of infections from the public, it is impossible to know exactly how far the virus has spread.

As noted above, this new strain was not identified immediately, thus blood tests of people showing possible symptoms may have shown false-negatives even though those individuals may have been carrying the virus. Once returned to the general population and assuming they did not contract the virus, it is certainly possible that it was then transmitted to others.

If Ebola has taken hold in Italy, then we can expect more reported cases all over the continent in coming weeks, with the real possibility that the virus could make its way to U.S. shores via hundreds of international flights arriving on a daily basis.

It’s understandable that government officials do not want to overreact and cause panic, especially insofar as global air travel is concerned, because doing so would lead to a lock down of airports worldwide.

The panic would be unprecedented.

As noted by Tess Pennington of Ready Nutrition, even if the public became aware that a pandemic was in progress, many would remain in denial about such a prospect and would remain oblivious to the long-term repercussions. She notes that the effects of a pandemic could be swift and drastic, leading to societal upheaval :

Citation:

Understanding that our lives will change drastically if the population is faced with a pandemic and being prepared for this can help you make better choices toward the well being of your family. Some changes could be:

Given the continued spread of the virus to numerous countries in Africa, and now possibly Europe, we urge readers to remain vigilant and have, at the very least, their basic essentials in place.

This virus is incurable and is believed to have a mortality rate of up to 85% of those infected.

If it is spreading outside of Africa, then it is only a matter of time – perhaps several weeks – before it becomes apparent in developing nations.

Citation:

These posted probabilities are in no way authoritative, and should be considered a “best guess” only. Probabilities of unchecked infection at this point, based upon a method of travel, times and frequencies of airline flights to various cities, also including certain assumed volumes of “mixed maritime” traffic between north Africa and southern Europe - the Probability that Ebola will strike is: 63% in Italy within 8 days 44% in Spain within 15 days 77% in Riyadh/Saudi within 21 days 40% in Libya within 25 days 29% in the US within 28 days 37% in Egypt within 33 daysBy the time we get to 35 days, it can be in 25 countries on 4 continents.(Source: TRN)

In the United States, the CDC has issued a travel alert to airlines and set up emergency quarantine stations at domestic airports, though there are no specific guidelines in place at this time according to BD Live:

Citation:

The US is well prepared to handle infected patients on its soil with 20 CDC quarantine stations in place at US airports that are designed to deal with anyone who has symptoms of a wide range of infectious illnesses, including Ebola, according to spokeswoman Christine Pearson. Despite the outbreak, there are no special requests or guidelines to airlines about Ebola, though the CDC has issued a travel alert, she said.

“The time it takes to travel from rural Guinea to anywhere in the US is more than enough time to incubate the virus and be symptomatic,” Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Laurie Garrett said in New York.

If in the next month we see Ebola popping up in North America then we may have a serious problem on our hands.

This is a developing report and is in no way conclusive. Official statements from the WHO, CDC and European governments have yet to confirm Ebola’s crossover into Europe or the United States. Updates will be provided as details become available.

The Central Reference Laboratory, in Almaty, Kazakhstan, is due for completion in 2015 Ben DaltonIn 1992, Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov, a biologist from the Soviet Union, boarded a flight in Almaty, then Kazakhstan's capital, for New York. When Dr. Alibekov—now known as Ken Alibek—sat down with the CIA, he had a terrifying secret to reveal: that bio weapons program the Soviet Union stopped in the 1980's hadn't actually stopped at all. He knew this because he had led Moscow's efforts to develop weapons-grade anthrax. In fact, he said, by 1989—around the time that Western leaders were urging the USSR to halt its secret bioweapons program, known as Biopreparat—the Soviet program had dwarfed the US's by many orders of magnitude. (This is disregarding the possibility that the US was also developing some of these weapons in secret, and, like Russia, still is.)One big problem, he added, was that, like the stockpiles of nuclear weapons left in the dust of the Soviet Union, the materials and the expertise needed to make a bioweapon—anthrax, smallpox, cholera, plague, hemorrhagic fevers, and so on—could still be lying about, for sale to the highest bidder. Of those scientists, Alibek told the Times in 1998, ''We have lost control of them."Today, biologists who worked in the former Soviet Union—like those who responded to a case of the plague across the border in Kyrgyzstan this week—are likely to brush Alibek's fears aside. But they'll also tell you that the fall of the Soviet Union devastated their profession, leaving some once prominent scientists in places like Almaty scrambling for new work. That sense of desperation, underlined by Alibek's defection to the US, has helped pump hundreds of millions of dollars into a Pentagon program to secure not just nuclear materials but chemical and biological ones, in a process by which Washington became, in essence, their highest bidder.This explains the hulking concrete structure I recently visited at a construction site on the outskirts of Almaty. Set behind trees and concrete and barbed-wire, Kazakhstan's new Central Reference Laboratory will partly replace the aging buildings nearby where the USSR kept some of its finest potential bioweapons—and where scientists study those powerful pathogens today. When it opens in September 2015, the $102-million project laboratory is meant to serve as a Central Asian way station for a global war on dangerous disease. And as a project under that Pentagon program, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the lab will be built, and some of its early operation funded, by American taxpayers.The far-flung biological threat reduction lab may look like a strange idea at a time of various sequester outbreaks, but officials say it's an important anti-terror investment, a much-needed upgrade to a facility that has been described as an aging, un-secure relic of the 1950's, and one that the Defense Dept. fears can't keep pace in an era of WMD. It's also an investment, they add, in a country where scientists are hungry for more international participation and better facilities—and where the U.S. is keen to keep sensitive materials and knowledge in the right hands and brains.

Security at the construction site: Carl Robichaud"You cannot erase this knowledge from someone’s mind,” said Lt. Col. Charles Carlton, director of the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency office in Kazakhstan. The threat of scientists going rogue, he said, is "a serious concern." "We're doing our best to employ these people. Our hope is that through gainful employment they won't be drawn down other avenues."There is no hard evidence that bioweapons were pilfered and sold during the 1990s, but Alibek has said that "there are many non-official stocks of smallpox virus," a virus that was officially eradicated in 1980. Western intelligence agencies also estimate that North Korea and Russia currently have the capacity to deploy smallpox as a weapon of mass destruction. (It's worth remembering however that fears in the run-up to the Iraq war about Saddam Hussein getting smallpox from Soviet scientists were unfounded, despite widely publicized reports by Judy Miller and others.) Other countries suspected of having inadvertently or deliberately retained specimens of the virus include China, Cuba, India, Iran, Israel and Pakistan.Bakyt B. Atshabar, head of the 60-year-old institute that will run the new lab, the Kazakh Scientific Center of Quarantine and Zoonotic Diseases, is keenly aware of the dangers of weapons development: his father helped diagnose the effects of weapons tests on thousands of people who lived near the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, in the north of the country.But to him and other biologists in Almaty, the lab is less about defense strategy and more about developing scientific expertise. Currently the KSCQZD is focused on studying and preventing potentially lethal contagion, like the case of the teenager across the southern border in Kyrgyzstan, who died last week from bubonic plague after eating a barbecued marmot (he was likely bitten by a flea, doctors said).

Dr. Bakyt B. Atshabar, head of the institute that will manage the Central Reference Lab: Motherboard

"We're looking forward to this becoming a regional training facility focused both on human and animal infections," he said. "Cholera is also one of the major problems in our region, mostly with our numerous southern neighbors." He also cited an incident in July in which Kazakh tourists returned from a trip in Southeast Asia with dengue fever.Increased trade with its eastern neighbor China also threatens to increase the transmission of disease. "Along with the construction of pipelines," he said, "come rodents and fleas." Meanwhile, the country's meager opposition has called the lab a risk to the citizens of Almaty; the city sits in an active seismic zone, and the lab lies just outside town, and not far from a populated suburban neighborhood. Officials have countered that the building is designed to meet the city's highest seismic standards, and will replace what a 2011 US embassy statement said were "older buildings at the institute that are not built to withstand such tremors.""I would say this could take just about anything," Dan Erbach, an engineer from AECOM, the contractor overseeing the project, said during a tour of the site, which is currently a set of bulking concrete stacked three and four stories high, set atop a remediated field. "There's more than twice as much strength in this building than any other building in the city." (The building's seismic standard was the result of an intervention by the government, which placed new requirements on the project before construction began in 2011. That pushed the initial completion date back a year to September 2015.)From a security and safety perspective, the new lab represents a giant leap. When documentarian Simon Reeve visited the existing facility in 2006, he saw Soviet-era buildings and security measures not likely to intimidate a determined terrorist—or a scientist—from sneaking some anthrax or plague out into the wild. Small locks on fridges were all that kept deadly vials from a fast escape.

"We're not that far from places where terrorists groups are living relatively openly," Reeve said. "They would love to break in here, they would love to get hold of this stuff."Breaches of security and competance have been a problem at U.S. biodefense labs for decades. Texas is a particular hotspot. In 2002, a renowned professor at Texas Tech was alleged to have lied about thirty vials of plague that went missing at his lab. In two separate incidents at Texas A&M in 2006, university officials failed to tell the Center for Disease Control after biodefense researchers were infected with brucella and Q fever, which has been researched as a weapon. In March, when a sample of Guanarito, a Venezualan virus, went missing at the Gavalston National Laboratory, officials cautiously blamed the apparently missing amount on a clerical error, but the incident is under investigation by the FBI. The Almaty lab will be outfitted with safety features like double-door access zones and special containment hoods, enough to qualify it under U.S. Centers for Disease Control standards as a level 3 biosafety lab, or BSL-3 (the highest level is BSL-4). Only a fraction of the lab will be dedicated to lethal dieases and certified at BSL-3; most of the other labs at the 87,000 square foot building will be BSL-2, for the non-lethal variety.But plague is already a focus of work at the existing lab in Almaty because it occurs naturally in nearly 40 percent of the country. (The KSCQZD began life in 1949 as the Central Asian Anti-Plague Scientific Research Institute.) Though it's often spread by fleas, depending on lung infections or sanitary conditions, it also can be spread in the air, through direct contact, or by contaminated undercooked food. Until June 2007, plague was one of the three epidemic diseases required to be reported to the World Health Organization, along with cholera and yellow fever. The case in Kyrgystan last week underscored the regional danger of its spread among humans; there are about 3,000 cases per year."We will evaluate the scale of contacts, likely natural carriers of the disease, such as rivers," Zhandarbek Bekshin, an official at Kazakhstan's Ministry of Health, said. No border crossings have been closed, local media reported, but over one hundred people who came into contact with the teenager were hospitalized.Climate change is also a concern at the lab. Because climate effects how plague spreads, studying the disease "can also be used as an indicator of changes to the natural environment," Dr. Atshabar said.For the US, however, the project is rooted in global security, and fits with its now decades-long collaboration with Kazakhstan in controlling weapons of mass destruction. In 1991 President Nazerbayev oversaw the dismantling and return to Russia of its nuclear weapons. But the country still maintains a store of pathogens that were once cherished by the Soviet military.The secret Biopreparat program came into sharp focus in 2001, when a former Soviet official explained to a Moscow newspaper the suspected basis of an outbreak of smallpox that sickened ten people and killed three in a community on the Aral Sea: they were the accidental victims of a Soviet military field test at a bioweapons facility based on a nearby island, he said. Because some of those sickened had already been vaccinated against smallpox, the incident raised questions about the ability of vaccines to protect against state-designed bioweapons.

Lt. Col. Charles Carlton, who heads the Defense Threat Reduction Agency's efforts in Kazakhstan, outside the CRL: Ben DaltonWith another smaller lab at a military base in the town of Otar, in western Kazakhstan on the Caspian Sea, and a flurry of similar projects in the works—in Russia, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia, and Azerbaijan—the Pentagon hopes its Defense Threat Reduction Agency can also establish a regional early warning system for infections and outbreaks. (As the U.S. weighed responses to Syria's use of chemical weapons this week, DTRA announced more grants for research into sensing and tracking WMD.) Is it possible, as some Russian critics have alleged, that labs like this could serve as brain trusts and storehouses for weapons research, for either the US or their home countries? "Russia sees this as... a powerful offensive potential," Gennady Onishchenko, the Chief Sanitary Inspector of Russia—a kind of Surgeon General—told reporters in July.Washington denies that these reference labs and the secret research at the historic home of American bioweapons, at the US Army base at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have anything to do with offensive weapons, that they meet the standards of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC), and that their work will eventually be made public.Funding for the $103 million construction project in Kazakhstan, and much of the lab's operations in its early years, will come from the Dept. of Defense, which envisions it as playing a central role in monitoring pathogen outbreaks, a strategy that received new funding after the anthrax attacks in 2001. Last year, the White House announced a program that consolidated these efforts under the banner of "biosurveillance."“DOD’s involvement in biosurveillance goes back probably before DOD to the Revolutionary War,” Andrew C. Weber, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, told American Forces Press Service last year. “We didn’t call it biosurveillance then, but monitoring and understanding infectious disease has always been our priority, because for much of our history, we’ve been a global force.”

Global outbreak of infectious disease (International Livestock Research Institute): MotherboardAs the former director of the two-decade old Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program (or "Nunn-Lugar" for short), Weber has paid special attention to Central Asia. After he spent much of the 1990s helping the U.S. remove weapons-grade uranium from the former Soviet Union under Nunn-Lugar, he was instrumental in creating Central Reference Laboratories in Almaty and elsewhere in the region. An English-language editorial in Pravda in July referenced Weber's role as something that should "promp[t] serious reflection." Responding to a US State Department report that Russia was possibly pursuing bioweapons research, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow noted that it "gives impression that the US, despite the changes occurring in the world, still remains in the grip of cold war propaganda." Kazakh officials meanwhile underscored that the lab, which operates under Kazakhstan's Ministry of Health, was not connected to Soviet defense research. But historically, scientists at the USSR's anti-plague institutes—including the one that will run the new Almaty lab—were also involved in a secret project to design vaccines for pathogens that had been modified by the military program that Dr. Alibek, the defector, once ran.On the sunny day earlier this month when we visited the site, however, the conversation was focused on saving lives through cooperation, not the opposite. The hope is that labs like this will simply encourage more international scientific relationships, the kind that build cultural trust, and the kind upon which science thrives. Despite "typical intergovernmental issues," Carlton and other officials expressed optimism about the collaboration. "I never like to refer to this as the former Soviet Union. That was in the past. In the military, it's been a sea change in our mentality."Kazakhstan has come so far in terms of government organization, and understanding the threat and the problem," he added. "This is a country that willingly said, we want to get rid of this threat and take the lead. Kazakhstan has opened up as an exemplar around the world."

CDC has determined that federal isolation and quarantine are authorized for MERS-CoV under Executive Order 13295

The above comments are from today’s CDC update in the week 38 MMWR. The above executive order was put in place for the control of SARS-CoV in 2003, which is listed on the CDC page of quarantinable diseases. The determination that MERS-CoV falls under the order for SARS-CoV recognizes the similarities between the two virus and its clinical effects. SARS and MERS are beta coronaviruses (2b and 2c, respectively) and produce similar clinical presentation in older cases, especially those with underlying conditions. WHO had initially maintained that MERS was unique because of the high frequency of renal failure in initial cases. However, SARS also caused renal failure in approximately 5% of confirmed cases, which was associated with a poor prognosis.

However, the cases identified because of severe pneumonia with no known etiology have an case fatality rate that is higher than SARS and it is these more severe MERS cases that are likely to be subjected to the above executive order.

The latest MMWR reflects growing concerns that the upcoming Hajj may facilitate the spread of MERS to countries sending pilgrims to Saudi Arabia and many countries have increased surveillance of symptom travelers who arrive from the Middle East.

Last updated Sat 3 May 2014Health officials are in the process of contacting British airline passengers who may have made contact with a passenger who has been hospitalised in the US with the often fatal MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome).

Health officials are in the process of contacting British airline passengers who may have made contact with a passenger Credit: PA

The man, a non-British national, took a British Airways flight 262 on April 24 from Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia, to London, where he changed flights at Heathrow to fly to the US.Public Health England said it has contacted UK passengers on the BA flight to London who were sitting in the vicinity of the affected passenger and is working with US health authorities to contact any British passengers on the April 24 onward flight to Chicago, American Airlines Flight 99. It said that the risk of the infection being passed to other passengers "is extremely low" but was contacting the passengers "as a precautionary measure." Any UK based passengers on Flight 262 on April 24 who have since become unwell or experienced respiratory symptoms, such as shortness of breath, are advised to contact NHS 111.

Lebanese Health Minister Wael Abu Faour said, Thursday, that the first case of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome was detected in Lebanon and that the patient was released after hospital treatment, according to the Daily Star. He added that the Health Ministry was also following up on epidemiological investigations and surveillance to ensure the virus does not spread across Lebanon.

The virus, which causes coughing, fever and pneumonia, has killed some 117 people in Saudi Arabia since it was detected in September 2012. Cases have also been reported in Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Oman, Tunisia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Britain. Abu Faour stressed that there was no need to panic, and called on Lebanese citizens “to take the usual measures for the prevention of respiratory diseases" noting that the cases recorded in some countries, the source being Gulf countries, did not lead to an epidemic.

Two cases of MERS, the deadly respiratory disease originating in Saudi Arabia, have been confirmed in Iran, according to the country’s health officials.MERS, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or Corona Virus, is an often-fatal pneumonia, bringing on a severe cough and high fevers.There are no vaccinations or direct treatment, and about a third of those infected die.Both individuals contracted the disease when they were hospitalized near an infected patient who had returned from pilgrimage to Mecca, although it has not been confirmed if that patient tested positive for the virus.To date, about 175 individuals in Saudi Arabia have died from MERS, which has already spread throughout the region and farther, with cases found in Malaysia, Greece, Lebanon and the United States. All other cases have been individuals who have either traveled to or come in contact with someone from Saudi Arabia.The two patients are sisters and one is in critical condition, according to Mohammad Mehdi Gooya, the director-general of communicable diseases at the Iranian Health Ministry's Centre for Diseases Control and Prevention.They are receiving treatment in Kerman, a northern Iranian province, where a total of four cases have been reported but only two confirmed.“This is a very dangerous virus. It’s not easy to get it but once you get it, it’s extremely lethal,” said Dr. David Samadi of the Fox News Medical A Team.“Global travel is exposing more people to the virus, but unfortunately there is still no good treatment, just fluid and rest,” said Samadi, Chair of Urology at Lenox Hill Hospital.MERS was discovered about two years ago in Saudi Arabia, and is believed to originate from camels, although Samadi said he is skeptical about that.The virus comes from the same family as SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which killed about 800 people globally after it was first detected in China in 2002.The cases in Iran appeared just before the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims from around the world travel to Saudi Arabia.All returning Iranian pilgrims will be tested for MERS, and those showing any symptoms will be quarantined for a minimum of two weeks, Gooya said.Almost one million Iranians make the trip each year. This year it will take place in October.

Posté le: Mer 25 Juin - 22:48 (2014) Sujet du message: CURRENT EBOLA OUTBREAK IS NOW THE WORST IN HISTORY AND 'TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL'

CURRENT EBOLA OUTBREAK IS NOW THE WORST IN HISTORY AND 'TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL' By Lauren F Friedman June 23, 2014 10:57 AM.

AP Photo/Kjell Gunnar Beraas, MSF

Healthcare workers from the Doctors Without Borders prepare isolation and treatment areas for their Ebola, hemorrhagic fever operations, in Gueckedou, Guinea. This article was changed on June 25 to add updated information.An outbreak of the terrifying Ebola virus emerged in the West African nation of Guinea in February and has been spreading ever since, infecting people in Sierra Leonne and Liberia as well. It is now the biggest and deadliest outbreak of Ebola since the virus was identified in 1976.Recent investigations by public health authorities suggest that it actually may have first emerged undetected as early as December.The disease's spread seemed to slow down for a while, but has picked up in recent weeks. An estimated 599 people have been infected, and 338 have died in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. While it's likely that many cases go uncounted, the Associated Press notes that previously, the largest reported death toll was in the Congo in 1976, when 280 people died. (The most widespread outbreak infected 425 people in Uganda in 2000, killing 224.)"The epidemic is now in a second wave," Bart Janssens, the director of operations for Doctors Without Borders told the Associated Press. "It is totally out of control."The 32 new cases reported June 24 were all in Liberia and Sierra Leone; two new deaths (but no new cases) were reported in Guinea. The three countries affected by this latest outbreak met on June 23 to "enhance coordination, information management, and communication," according to the World Health Organization."There needs to be a real political commitment that this is a very big emergency," Janssens added. "Otherwise, it will continue to spread, and for sure it will spread to more countries."This outbreak is unique because it has struck densely populated areas like Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, and Conakry, the capital city of Guinea, where there have been 65 cases and 33 deaths. Ebola usually emerges in sparsely populated rural regions, where fewer people pass through."Major challenges faced by all partners in the efforts to control the outbreak include its wide geographic spread, weak health-care infrastructures, and community mistrust and resistance," the CDC noted in a recent update.In an interview with NBC News, Robert Garry, a microbiology professor at the Tulane University School of Medicine, warned that the outbreak so far is just "the tip of the iceberg."Still, in its latest update, the World Health Organization said it "does not recommend any travel or trade restrictions be applied to Guinea, Liberia, or Sierra Leone based on the current information available."Ebola is one of the deadliest viruses ever known, with the most fatal strains killing up to 90% of people infected. The current strain has killed 66% of those infected in Guinea, 51% of those infected in Sierra Leone, and 73% of those infected in Liberia.Ebola begins as fever, weakness, muscle pain, headache, and sore throat, but soon progresses to vomiting, diarrhea, rash, and impaired organ function. A large proportion of those infected also bleed profusely, both internally and externally. It's considered highly contagious, though it isn't transmitted through the air — instead it's spread by bodily fluids like blood and saliva, which can be very hard to avoid when someone is bleeding heavily from every orifice.Ebola first emerged in humans in 1976, and there have been more than 18 outbreaks since then. There is currently no vaccine and no cure.

Danger! A new vaccin will be test on citizens, beginning in September. Please translate this article to know more about what's taking place ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/sante/2014/07/31/001-vaccin-ebola-canada-tests.shtml

*Sierra Leone mobilizes police and military “to make sure people cooperate with medical teams” *Ebola epicentres to be quarantined*Towns and homes to be sealed off until “cleared” by medical teams*”Active surveillance and house to house searches” of Ebola victims and people “who might have been exposed.”*Restrictions on public meetings and gatherings*New protocols for screening passengers at airportRead more about the declaration of emergency by the Sierra Leone government at: